Competition

Cooper is a sensitive soul; he is thoughtful, intelligent, and has a wonderful vocabulary. He's a fantastic reader, and tries hard to be a good friend. Among all these wonderful qualities, we've discovered that Cooper is also a little bit competitive. (I have no idea where he gets that, by the way.) This weekend his 4th grade team went to their very first traveling basketball tournament in New Prague. We are clearly a C level team, but due to full brackets we got placed in a higher division. It was a rough first tourney; our team lost all three games, and lost them big.

I was coaching my own team, so I wasn't able to go along. Aaron was sending me updates on the day regularly; they were very descriptive and highly entertaining. I asked him to send me a couple of pictures from the day if he had a chance; I hate missing my kids' events. Somewhere after the second loss (34-14) I asked, "How's Cooper handling it?" He sent back this picture:

Oh goodness.
We have been working on losing without high emotion; I believe that during the last talk we had about it, I suggested that when he felt frustrated he should take some time alone and calm down. I think maybe this is his strategy?